Senate Confirms First Hispanic Justice for Supreme Court

Today, the U.S. Senate voted along mostly party lines to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to be the first person of Hispanic descent to ever sit on our nation’s Supreme Court – and only the third woman out of 111 to sit on the bench.

She will replace David Souter, who retired in June.

Justice Sotomayor received the votes of all Democratic senators (with the exception of Edward Kennedy, who is gravely ill and did not vote), but only 9 of the 40 Republicans.

She was born in a housing project in the Bronx. Her parents were from Puerto Rico and her father died when she was only nine years old. Justice Sotomayor graduated with honors from Princeton University and from Yale Law School in 1979. She has served on the highly influential Second Circuit Court of Appeals since 1998, and the District Court for the Southern District of New York before that, and has written over 300 opinions.

I applaud this long overdue nomination of an Hispanic American, especially someone with her outstanding qualifications and experience.